3 - The Factory Act Debates: Financial Perspectives

Summary

The saddest news is, that we should find our National Existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend on selling manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper than any other People. A most narrow stand for a great Nation to base itself on.

A stark feature of the British industrial revolution, particularly in the textile industries, was the enforcement of long hours through factory discipline, including hours worked by children. There were many examples of labour exploitation in the early cotton mills. The worst of these stirred public opinion and created increasing pressure for legislation. Employment of children was widespread, not because of the low cost of child workers, but as a result of labour shortages, and the survival of older legislation and its accommodation to the factory system. These justifications, along with the technological features of industrialization discussed in previous chapters, particularly the model 2 phase of development, combined to shape the characteristics of entrepreneurial opportunity.

Litton Mill in Derbyshire during the 1780s is perhaps the best-documented example and illustrates in a single case the negative factors that tended to promote child exploitation. In the second half of the eighteenth century, parishes in the south of England were facing escalating costs for maintaining paupers, particularly children, and new employment opportunities in the north presented a convenient solution. Child apprentices were sent in batches from the southern districts, including London, to mills such as Litton. Although there were abundant sites for water, first in Derbyshire and then more decisively in Lancashire, reliance on water power created labour shortages, as the best streams were often in remote valleys. Child apprentices were a convenient solution to this problem, which entrepreneurs such as Ellis Needham at Litton were keen to exploit. Needham, like others in the area attracted to the opportunities offered by industry, came from a landowning family that provided the necessary capital. Margins were generous and new entrants were encouraged by the prospects of high profits, as the evidence in chapters 1 and 2 has shown. Such benefits were rather more elusive in the remote mills, due to high costs associated with transport, and supervision and maintenance of the child workforce. In Needham's case, Litton mill was disadvantaged for all these reasons, and financial difficulties set the context for his brutal treatment of child workers such as Robert Blincoe.